Management of resources within a wireless communication system is always of concern. However, with the advent of small cell systems and their overlap with other wireless communication systems, this concern has grown. Small cells may include picocells, femtocells, relay nodes and in general any node that defines explicitly or implicitly a new cell. When overlapped by a larger or macro cell system, the multiple systems are considered layers and are collectively referred to as heterogeneous networks (HTN).
FIG. 1 illustrates a portion of a conventional heterogeneous network (HTN) having multiple stacked cell layers. FIG. 1 shows the coverage area of a macro cell served by a macro base station 10 also called an evolved NodeB or eNodeB. As shown, the coverage area includes a network 15 of pico cells, each served by a pico base station 20 also called a pico evolved NodeB or pico eNodeB. User equipment (UE) 25 falls within the coverage area of one or more of the pico base stations 20 and therefore the coverage area of the macro base station 10. The communication needs of the UE may be served by one of the communication nodes—pico base stations 20 or macro base station 10. If served by a pico base station 20, the UE's traffic may traverse the pico network 15 (i.e., from pico eNodeB to pico eNodeB) to a gateway 40, and from the gateway 40 to other networks and/or the internet. Also, the UE's traffic may traverse the pico network 15 to the macro base station 10, and from the macro base station 10 to other networks and/or the internet. Still further, the UE's traffic may flow directly to and from the macro base station 10. As will be appreciated additional and/or different network layers may be present. For example, in addition to or instead of the pico network 15, a Femto network may exist or individual Femto cells may exist.
In today's networking architecture for small cells, a well-known X2 interface is established between the small cell of interest and each neighboring small cell. As shown in FIG. 1, this forms an X2 interface cloud among the pico base stations 20. Similarly, an X2 interface between the small cell of interest and each neighboring macrocell are set up. This is also shown in FIG. 1, with the macro base station 10 having N X2 interfaces with N pico base stations 20. The X2 interfaces carry information such as for managing interference from base station to base station. Interference problems are far worse in HTNs because of the overlapping layers; therefore, managing the use of resources (e.g., transmission power, transmission rate, etc.), which affect interference becomes more important.